Use Mine
by Shujinkakusama
Summary: Pearls are meant to be owned, take instruction from other Gems, and Garnet is the only possible candidate after Rose's death. Neither of them is happy about this. / Starts pre-series, works through what we have so far. Pearlnet.
1. Pull

This was originally supposed to be very short, and morphed into something long by accident. What if Pearls needed instruction to survive? What if, without Rose to command her or to dedicate herself to, Pearl needs someone else to tell her what to do?

What if neither she nor Garnet knows what to do with this?

* * *

Sometime after Rose's passing, Pearl had felt the shift.

It was a programmable quirk; something Pearls had built-in as a failsafe, to prevent unseemly things like independence and free thought. Apparently the Gem that had ordered her creation had thought to ensure that she would always seek instruction, seek dominance, _ownership_ by another Gem. Pearl didn't like it one bit, but she felt the pull in her Gem, felt it in the way her eyes learned to track Garnet's movements.

Garnet was the new leader of the Crystal Gems—which made Garnet an ideal owner.

The word put a rotten taste on her tongue, and thinking it made her pull a face when she knew no one was looking. She hadn't felt this sort of pulling in her in centuries; Rose had made it very clear that there were boundaries, and those boundaries involved Pearl breaking away from her programming, ignoring her conditioning, and obeying Rose's wishes that she find her own way, her own happiness. And she had—in watching over Rose's happiness, in keeping her entertained with things she could tell Rose would enjoy watching. Pearl had been able to trick her programming then, work around centuries of schooling, because in the end Rose's smile and appraisal were no different than she would have sought to earn on Homeworld.

This wasn't Homeworld.

And Garnet wasn't Rose.

They worked on the house together, and Pearl sometimes sang to herself while she fitted roof tiles and made sure that beams were at perfect ninety-degree angles. She asked Garnet for advice on the building's floor plan, warned her before she went out of sight for more than a few moments, and prayed to every Goddess above that the Fusion didn't notice.

It should have been Steven, after all; he had Rose's Gem. But he was a child, five-years-old and still living with Greg. He visited—they both did—but Steven had no instructions for her, no orders or requests, not even _questions_. The child was shy, and Pearl feared he would never be anything like his mother—and that would be both terrible and wonderful. Pearl tried not to think about it.

At least it hadn't been Amethyst, she thought, balancing precariously while she made sure the center beam she was perched on was perfectly level. She'd felt so sure during sanding, but now she worried that her efforts had been wasted, lost to a few centimeters of misalignment. Pearl frowned deeply. Amethyst had been an absolute nightmare since Rose… gave her physical form up, and besides, was much too young. She couldn't imagine belonging to someone she had helped polish. Amethyst wasn't a child—though Rose had babied her—but she was the youngest, save for Steven.

So it was… good, in the end, that Garnet was her new owner. Even if Garnet didn't know it yet. Pearl didn't expect her to take it well if she did find out; everything about Garnet was Earth, down to her heady scent and low voice, and to find out that she was bound by Homeworld's rules after everything they had fought for and against…

The alabaster Gem scowled at the level in her hands, daring the bubble to move even a fraction further from the middle. No, Garnet must never find out. She would keep it secret. Keep Garnet out of the loop.

That approach worked for less than two weeks before Garnet confronted her about it.

Missions were far less frequent now, and Pearl hadn't lost her edge, but Garnet's leading style was… difficult to settle into. Being told to do her thing, when the knight's instinct was to protect Rose at all costs, save explicit instruction contrary, left something to be desired with their current Roseless formation. Pearl was still quick and light on her feet, but throwing herself between Garnet and a corrupted Gem beast gave her away—and nearly cost her her physical form.

"Boiler Room. Immediately," Garnet had said through clenched teeth, once the monster was bubbled and sent away, and Amethyst hadn't teased Pearl for the first time in weeks. Pearl met Garnet in the Temple basement after returning to base, and her companion was waiting for her, standing arms akimbo, with the lava pit bubbling dangerously behind her.

"You've been acting—wrong," Garnet's voice caught as though she'd had something else she wanted to say, and Pearl didn't meet her eyes. "For weeks. What's going on?"

That was a direct enough question. Pearl fidgeted with the sheer hem of her skirt, trying to draw words from the cloth without success. When staring into the lava pit made her eyes burn, she tore her gaze away. Her feet were interesting enough. "It was instinct," she said, dodging the question as best she could. "I won't do it again."

"Good—but I'm not talking about just now," Garnet snapped back, and Pearl could see her shadow pacing. The Fusion must have been much more upset than she thought. That made sense; the stoicism was new, came with her most recent reformation. Ruby and Sapphire had split apart shortly after Steven's birth, grieved separately in their own ways for weeks, and returned as Garnet shortly after.

And this Garnet was new, and serious, and had some of Sapphire's icy demeanor. Pearl stood at attention, or some shadow of it, avoiding eye contact. Garnet stopped in front of her, and Pearl felt the Fusion's gaze boring into her.

"What's going on, Pearl?"

It wasn't voluntary, but Pearl took a step back, and Garnet stepped with her. "Oh… It's nothing!" Pearl's voice wavered with her lie, and Garnet continued to follow her backtracking until the alabaster Gem's back was against the wall. "It's nothing, Garnet, really…"

"Pearl…" Garnet's voice was a low rumble. Pearl's eyes stayed glued to the ground between them, the short distance between Garnet's feet and hers.

"No, really, I—" Pearl started, cut short by Garnet's hand abruptly slamming into the rock beside her face. She yelped, startled, and managed to look up at the Fusion finally.

It wasn't often that Garnet's visor was transparent, but she could see the vague shape of her eyes boring down on her in the dim light of the room. The Fusion's jaw was set, all three eyes narrowed, nostrils flared—she was furious, could see through her lies—and Pearl froze under her scrutiny.

They stayed like that, at a standstill for long moments, and Pearl knew it was her turn to come clean.

"I… Oh, Garnet, you'll be upset," Pearl protested weakly, "It's… it's ancient history, you don't _want_ to know, I wanted to keep it from you…"

"Well, you can't," Garnet said, frowning deeply. "I don't want secrets. We can't _afford_ secrets, Pearl." Not now. Not with only three of them.

Pearl was silent for a long moment. "How much do you know about Pearls?" she asked at length, earning a grunt of surprise from her companion. "About how we… I… function?" Garnet shook her head, and while Pearl wasn't surprised, she sorely wished that she _did_ know. It would be so much easier than explaining. She drew in a shaky breath. "Ever since Rose…" she started, "…left, I've been… incomplete. Not—not in a… a romantic way." Although she certainly was that. Pearl's cheeks heated in embarrassment, and she wrung her hands. "I… we Pearls, we're meant to have instruction, and order, and… to be commanded. It's instinct. It's… it's programmed into us, into our Gems, just like anything else. And without Rose, my Gem wants me to follow… you."

That was not the response Garnet expected.

She stared back dumbly, and Pearl sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying it hard enough to split the skin.

"I'm not Rose Quartz," Garnet said stiffly. Pearl nodded miserably, feeling tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. No one could ever be Rose Quartz, not even her child. Rose had been one of a kind. Garnet certainly couldn't be Rose.

"I know." Pearl's voice was small and shaky. She wanted to reach for Garnet, to explain herself, but she found that folding inward was easier. Garnet's visor darkened; Pearl dropped her gaze.

"You're not a robot."

Robots certainly wouldn't be on the verge of tears, Pearl thought bitterly, but she nodded all the same. Garnet was right; she wasn't an inorganic construct built on ones and zeros, with limited programming and no capacity for learning. She was a Gem; a highly sophisticated, intergalactic being made of light and magic. A Pearl.

"And this is Earth. You don't need my instruction," Garnet concluded, and the softness in her tone was lost on Pearl, whose shoulders took to trembling as she tried to keep from crying. Pearl tried to nod, even though her instincts screamed that Garnet was wrong. She needed instruction. She needed order. She needed to be owned and possessed, to belong to someone she could completely dedicate herself to. She needed Rose more than anything, and without her, she needed Garnet.

She was a Pearl, and she was a knight, and Garnet wasn't seeing that.

Instinct and grief stilled her tongue, and Pearl said nothing. Garnet's hand against the wall withdrew, and settled very briefly on her head before the Fusion drew away completely.

"You are your own Gem, Pearl," Garnet went on, "We're teammates. We're friends. Nothing more. There's no caste system here."

Some part of her understood that the words were meant to be encouraging. The rest of her felt gutted, and Pearl nodded again, bobbing her head mechanically. "I understand," she whispered, and Garnet frowned. Pearl wondered if it was the wrong answer, or if her inflection were the problem. She drew in a shaky sigh, pushed down her feelings into a sick, anxious knot in her stomach, and mustered up a terrible imitation of a smile. "I'm sorry, Garnet. I didn't mean to put something like this on you. It's fine."

Her placating tone needed work; the Fusion frowned deeply. "Pearl—"

"No, no," Pearl said hastily, gathering herself up to leave. She clenched her hands so tightly that her knuckles went blue. "You're right. This isn't Homeworld. It's fine."

Every future that flickered through Garnet's vision in that instant told her that was a lie—it wasn't fine, but she could think of nothing more to say. There were too many futures where Pearl became someone else entirely, where she doted and fawned out of obligation, and Garnet wouldn't suffer those. She wasn't Rose; she didn't want Pearl to fall back into centuries old habits. "If you're sure," Garnet said reluctantly. Pearl nodded more vigorously this time, with false certainty.

"I've got to get to work on the house," Pearl said, glad for the excuse to escape the boiler room. "Those hardwood floors won't prime themselves! Sorry, Garnet, I won't mess up on the next mission."

And like that, she was gone.

Garnet watched the door, knowing that Pearl wouldn't be returning the same way, and heaved a sigh. She thought, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, of the weight Rose had left on her shoulders by passing on her mantle, and of how unprepared she felt for it all. Staring down at the paired Gems in her hands for guidance, Garnet sank down to sit at the edge of the lava pit.

Ruby knew nothing about Pearls on Homeworld; she'd seen them, but the once-terrifying renegade was the first she had ever spoken to. If there were some secret rule about passing Pearls between Gems, it was something the upper class did; not some common soldier.

Surprisingly, Sapphire was similarly uninformed. Blue Diamond's court kept Pearls; the matriarch herself had one, a lovely little blue thing that stood at attention and rarely, if ever, uttered a word. But Pearl was unlike any other she'd ever met, and Sapphire had never _owned_ anyone. That had never been in her life plan before she jumped the track of fate.

Pearl had no reason to lie, Garnet supposed, but the entire idea felt sick—commanding her comrades felt strange enough in battle; she left her instructions deliberately open-ended, knowing that Pearl and Amethyst could fight at least as well as she could. Giving commands the way she remembered Rose doing, long ago, seemed blasphemous. Pearl was older and more experienced than she was, and perfectly capable on her own.

Garnet didn't understand much about Homeworld or its practices, and didn't feel the need to. She knew that mixed Fusion was forbidden, that her very existence went against the order they had fought tirelessly against for a thousand years. She knew that Pearl, for all her strengths, only had value in her beauty. She knew that Amethyst would have been shattered for being imperfect. She knew that Rose Quartz gave up a life unparalleled to fight for love, peace, and freedom on the planet Earth. Homeworld was wrong—and just like they had driven off the invading Gems from that awful place, everything it left behind ought to be left thousands of years in the past.

It was a long time before Garnet left the comfort of her hearth. When she did, she saw Pearl polishing away at the newly-installed hardwood floor, just as she'd said she would—and without a word of acknowledgment, the Fusion took to the warp, off to handle a smaller mission alone.

Normalcy was better.


	2. Knot

In which months pass, and things only get worse.

* * *

It had been only a few months, and Pearl was visibly deteriorating without instruction.

Garnet thought at first that it was a byproduct of her grief over Rose. Grief came in waves, and five years was nothing—especially after several thousand. She wasn't sure of Pearl's exact age, because that hadn't mattered, but they had fought together on Earth for more than a thousand times longer than Rose had been gone—and that was no small number. Amethyst still had days where it was the first day all over again, where she took to her room and destroyed everything she could, spun until she was sick with something other than crushing sadness. Garnet did, too, but she didn't have the luxury of showing it in front of her teammates. She would submerge herself in lava to cry, where no one else could see or hear or even _sense_ her.

And Pearl…

Pearl was prone to fits where she would lock herself in her room for days, or else where she ran away until her feelings were out of her system. The alabaster Gem tried to make herself an island, and Garnet could see her failing at it without her future vision. She fought with Amethyst, got worked up to tears, and Garnet often had to intervene before one of them turned violent—and sometimes, when she chided the both of them, something would flicker in Pearl's pale blue eyes, some switch flipped, before she gave in.

Garnet didn't want to acknowledge it. Didn't want Pearl to think that fighting with Amethyst would get her the instruction she truly didn't need. Pearl was a perfectly capable Gem. Garnet couldn't fathom why she would want instruction _now_ , after fighting so long and hard for independence and freedom. It seemed to go in the opposite spirit of everything Pearl stood for, everything she had ever striven to be.

Whatever the reason, it was hard to ignore. Work on the house was slow; there were only three able-bodied Gems to do the unfamiliar work, and Pearl and Amethyst hadn't been able to maintain Opal even once since Steven's birth. Pearl often took on too much for herself, and Garnet recognized this as a coping method. Working meant not thinking.

Still, Pearl was slipping. In battle was one thing; Garnet was learning to bark out orders, though it still felt strange on her tongue, and Pearl executed instruction flawlessly. But left to her own devices, Garnet would catch her obsessively checking on tiny things, little nitpicks in the house's design. Pearl had taken apart the coffee table three times before going to the hardware store to buy and hand-sand new pegs to make sure that everything was symmetrical. Another day, she had dismantled the slatted blinds for the skylight and oiled each shaft, re-sanded them all, and reassembled the entire thing—twice.

"You don't have to keep doing that stuff," Amethyst complained, hefting what would—soon—become the kitchen counter on her back. Work better shared, but Garnet was installing windows, and Amethyst was impatient to go somewhere by herself later.

"It needs to be done _right_ ," Pearl insisted, ignoring the way Amethyst huffed in disagreement. The purple Gem let the counter come to a resounding THUD against the ground, and Pearl nearly shrieked. "Amethyst! You'll damage the floor!"

"It's gonna be under a cabinet," Amethyst countered, rolling her visible eye. "Are we done with that yet? Because I don't know why we even need a stone counter—"

"It needs to be _nice_ for _Steven_!" Pearl argued, and Garnet could almost hear her fraying. This would escalate into another fight, one Pearl had already lost along with her cool, and Garnet heaved a sigh.

"Pearl," she said dully, "Come walk with me. You can fix up the stairs later."

"I have to keep doin' this all on my own?" Amethyst whined, sounding betrayed. "Pearl was the one—"

"You can take a break, Amethyst," Garnet said, pushing her visor up. "Have some fun. I just need to talk to Pearl."

Looks were exchanged, and Garnet truthfully didn't care to see who moved first. She exited through the unfinished doorway without a second glance, heading for the far side of the beach, away from the city. Pearl wasn't far behind; Garnet didn't need to hear her quiet footsteps to know that Pearl was there. She said nothing until they had both passed under the lee of the temple, rounded the cliff face. The sunlight was fading, casting warm orange hues over the beach.

Pearl was the one to break the silence between them. She faltered a bit before she spoke, and Garnet let her struggle with her words. "Did I do something wrong, Garnet?" she asked finally, "I… you've been more stern lately, and…"

"You and Amethyst have been fighting a lot more," Garnet said, voice sharp, and Pearl froze instantly. "And you've been acting…" she paused, looking for the right word. It didn't come, and the Fusion frowned deeply. "Wrong. More than the last time we had to talk about this."

The alabaster Gem stared up at her comrade. The last time Garnet had described her behavior as 'wrong' had been months ago, when her Gem had…

"Oh."

Garnet turned, catching a glimpse of Pearl's pale face, expression drawn, lips pursed in a thin line. The Fusion watched as her companion's face fell, wide blue eyes suddenly transfixed by the ebbing tide. Pearl didn't speak; didn't move a muscle. Garnet exhaled through her nose. "Is it related?" she asked finally, folding her arms impassively. Pearl didn't need to look up to know that her visor would be completely solid, and neither did she need to see through it to know that Garnet was glaring at her. "If you're trying to trick me into giving you orders—"

"I'm not doing it on purpose!" Pearl said hastily, and Garnet knew that much was true, but she wasn't any less annoyed. Pearl wasn't a good liar under scrutiny. "Garnet, I—everything Amethyst does, it just… it's so aggravating! She's so loud and unorganized, she doesn't follow direction, she isn't _helping_ , she's reckless and immature and I can't—"

"Pearl! You're both grieving," Garnet cut her off, and Pearl's gaze dropped again, mouth immediately snapping shut. The Fusion sighed. "We all are. This isn't easy, but picking fights isn't helping anyone. You won't find peace by fighting with Amethyst over every little thing."

The smaller Gem listened, nodding slowly. Garnet was right, of course, and she knew it. "I don't mean to make things worse," Pearl said softly, "That's not my intention. I just… I can't stand it, Garnet. You don't understand! I need order, I need _instruction_ , I need someone to tell me what to _do_. There's no order on this planet! I'm not…" tears pooled in her eyes, and she reached up, covering her Gem with her hand. "I'm not supposed to be… _any_ of this… I can't outlive my owner, Pearls don't _do_ that…"

"Rose wasn't your—"

"She was! That's why you don't understand!" Pearl's cheeks heated in frustration, a wash of teal spreading over her nose. Tears ran down her cheeks, and she let them. "You and Amethyst can't understand! I _belonged_ to Rose! I was _made_ for her, Garnet, and now she's _gone_ , and _you_ won't take me—"

It was Garnet's turn to flush. "I'm not Rose!" she protested, altogether unsure of what to do now that Pearl was falling apart on her. "If you were made for her, how could I possibly—"

"I don't _know_!" Pearl shrilled, fists balling, "All I know is I—Garnet, my _Gem_ wants you to! Everything in me is screaming that it's _got_ to be you now! You're the only one I… Amethyst is too immature, Steven's half human, it has to be you!"

"It can't be me!" Garnet shook her head, "Pearl, you don't need an owner, this isn't—"

"It doesn't matter where we are, it's _what_ I am!" Pearl's voice cracked, and Garnet took a step back from her this time. "And I understand you don't want me, you don't want anything to do with Homeworld, and this would be a constant reminder—but I can't escape it! It never stops, and I don't know what to do if you won't have me!"

For long moments, Garnet said nothing. It wasn't that Pearl's words fell on deaf ears, exactly. It wasn't that she didn't have anything _to_ say, exactly. But she was frozen, paralyzed as she watched Pearl break down where she stood, sinking to her knees to sob into her hands.

Possible futures shot out in so many directions from here, this pivotal moment Garnet hadn't expected at all, that Garnet couldn't begin to gauge them. There were several potential futures where she lied for Pearl's sake, and ten years down the line, those futures were disastrous. Rejecting her again seemed no better.

Neither did trying to fill Rose's footsteps.

Trying to take Rose's place had never felt right, but especially not like this.

"I… I don't know what to tell you," Garnet said finally, reaching hesitantly without moving close enough to make contact. Pearl sobbed into her hands, so loudly that Garnet wondered if she had heard her at all. "Pearl… Pearl, I can't tell you what to do every day. I can't _own_ you. I can't be that for you. I can't see you as… as belonging to _anyone_ —" With the exception of Rose Quartz, but that went without saying, "—much less _me_. I'm not qualified! We've never had that type of…" The Fusion trailed off, knowing that she was babbling, and knowing it wasn't helping. Pearl had stopped sobbing, at least, but her eyes looked dull.

" _Use me_ ," Pearl grit out, scrubbing at her puffy eyes with a fist. "I don't care what for, Garnet. Just please, make this stop…"

Something in her tone made Garnet's stomach churn. "You're not a _thing,_ Pearl!"

"I'll tarnish like this!" Pearl snapped back, bowing her head to hide the resurgence of tears. She didn't want to see Garnet's face right now, not when she was begging. "You said I've been wrong, so tell me how to be right! Whatever it is, I'll do it!"

" _Stop_!" Garnet's voice was desperate, and Pearl flinched, but obeyed. The knight lowered her hands to her knees, keeping her head bowed. "Do you _want_ this? With me?" Garnet could see either answer clearly; a tangled mess of futures where Pearl answered _yes_ and doomed their already precarious relationship to something strange and incomprehensible. And the alternative, where neither of them wanted anything to do with this…

"Of course not!" Pearl answered, looking up abruptly, "Why do you think I've… Garnet, do I _look_ happy asking this of you?"

From her disheveled hair, puffy eyes, tear-stained cheeks, down to the damp sand on her knees, she looked anything but.

"Then _why_ me?" Garnet asked, finally stepping forward, kneeling in the sand in front of Pearl. For the first time since they'd left the house, Pearl could see through her tinted visor, could make out the shapes of Garnet's eyes even if she couldn't see them well.

She watched Garnet's eyes flicker across her face, searching for something, and Pearl swallowed hard. "There's no one else," Pearl said, "And it's not… it's not up to me. It's instinct. I can't explain it, Garnet! It's never _happened_ to me before."

Again, Garnet was silent for a long stretch, wrestling with something internally. Pearl watched her, watched the bigger Gem's shadow stretch out over her as the sun continued to sink below the horizon. The knight said nothing, but at least she could take the time to gather her wits, drawing in long breaths to bury the taste of her earlier crying.

And then, after a long while, Garnet reached and took one of her hands. "You'll have to explain it to me. All of it. Or I can't help you," Garnet said slowly, drawing Pearl up to her feet. Wide blue eyes stared up at her, briefly confused, before realization flickered across her countenance like a shooting star.

"You mean—?"

"I don't like it," Garnet said in no uncertain terms, pausing a moment before she tucked Pearl's arm against her side. The smaller Gem flushed at the contact, but didn't protest; her free hand found Garnet's bicep instinctively. Something about that felt right. Garnet looked down, startled, but couldn't deny the relieved feeling that bloomed in her chest now that Pearl wasn't crying. "But if you need it, I'll… try. To understand. And to help. It won't be the same."

Pearl looked up at her, then managed a faint smile—barely an upturn of the lips, but more than Garnet had seen from her in weeks. "I don't want it to be the same," Pearl said quietly, "I mean, yes, I want… instruction; I miss Rose. But I don't want you to _be_ Rose, Garnet."

Despite herself, Garnet heaved a great sigh of relief at those words. "You don't know how glad we… I am, hearing that," Garnet said, shaking her head. Pearl fell into step with her as they walked back up the beach.

"I've never wanted you to be her," Pearl insisted, voice heavy. "I can't think of anything I would want less… I think," she paused, worrying her bottom lip. "I think that's why I took it so badly. This… imprinting business."

Garnet quirked a brow at that. "You and me both," she agreed, giving Pearl's arm a squeeze, "But go on. This is imprinting?"

The pink-haired Gem bobbed her head in an affirmative nod. "I think so," Pearl murmured thoughtfully, "It's… it's a failsafe. I've heard of it happening… back before the war. On Homeworld. To keep Pearls in line," she explained slowly, averting her eyes. "It's supposed to help keep us from… from going rogue. Getting ideas. Being more than decorative."

"You've already done all of that," Garnet teased gently. For her efforts, she was rewarded with a little smile and an elbow against her side without any real force behind it.

"Doesn't seem to have helped," Pearl mused, gaze lingering over the sea as stars began to appear along the horizon. "I didn't… I thought I got around it. It didn't hit immediately, and I thought… maybe I overcame this part. I broke so many other rules. I'm so defective already—"

"Don't," Garnet said, cutting in firmly. "You aren't defective, Pearl. You're remarkable."

Pearl disagreed, but she was happy to accept the compliment. Garnet's tone left little room for argument, and she'd had her fill of that for one decade. Drawing a shaky breath, she refocused her attention back to Garnet, looking up at the Fusion in the semi-darkness. "The point being, I never expected this to happen… especially like this," she said, feeling her cheeks color. "It doesn't—that is, it doesn't have to be… like what Rose and I had. That isn't… isn't part of it."

"You'll have to be more specific," Garnet admitted, steering Pearl away from the Temple, past the unfinished beach house. Still only half completed, it looked strange and altogether out of place tucked in the hands of the Temple. The Fusion absently ran her thumb over Pearl's knuckles, eliciting a noise that wasn't quite a sigh. Whatever it was, Garnet liked it. She peered down at the smaller Gem, followed her distant gaze, and waited for clarification.

When Pearl did speak it was with some trepidation. She and Rose hadn't been private about their relationship by any means, but the wound was so fresh that Pearl wasn't sure she could get through more than a sentence without coming to tears. "I just… need a firm hand sometimes," Pearl said quietly, "Permission to do things, instructions… Just—clear-cut. Explicit instruction. Someone else's clarity. I think that's all I need to make it stop itching."

"What itches?" She seemed to have left some crucial details out, but Garnet was beginning to puzzle it all together.

"My Gem," Pearl said, reaching to point toward the center of the Gem in her forehead. "Right in the center—it's felt like it's on _fire_ , but of course, that's not possible… It's the worst feeling I've ever experienced."

That explained the short-temper and erratic behavior, at least. Garnet sighed, laying a gentle hand on the crown of Pearl's head, stopping her briefly. "You could have said so," she said quietly, and Pearl nodded slowly.

"I didn't think to," she admitted guiltily, staring up with wide eyes as Garnet's palm glowed a faint blue—Sapphire's magic—to ghost over her Gem. The stones didn't touch, but the wash of cool power against her Gem made her shiver in the warm night air, clutching Garnet's arm more tightly to her chest. "I'm sorry. I should have explained right from the start—"

"It seems I should've listened," Garnet murmured, "It would've spared you the last few months… you and Amethyst both."

Pearl groaned, pressing her face into Garnet's arm. "Oh, stars… I should apologize," she mumbled, "I don't know if I can _explain_ this to her, Garnet…"

The Fusion hummed thoughtfully. Amethyst knew even less about Homeworld than she did, and she didn't foresee her using the knowledge that Pearl _needed_ instruction and order well. "Don't tell her everything," she said finally, "It's better if just we know, for now."

Pearl paused, said nothing for a long moment, and nodded minutely. "Is that an order?" she asked hopefully, and Garnet was immensely relieved to see a spark of mischief in her eyes.

Maybe this wouldn't be so disastrous.

Garnet grunted, not quite noncommittally. But Pearl could see her eyes through her visor, almost clear now that it was just the two of them together, and all three crinkled at the corners in pleasure. "If you wish."

"I think I do," Pearl replied, pressing her face into Garnet's arm, smothering a smile against her skin. "Thank you."


	3. Plait

Garnet and Pearl keep trying to move forward.

* * *

With fresh commands to follow, Pearl thrived like Garnet hadn't seen in years. The neuroticism didn't vanish overnight—actually, Pearl seemed to embrace this long-dormant part of herself, and Garnet didn't mind. She picked up on little things that the Fusion didn't notice, prevented small disasters before Garnet could anticipate them. Amethyst hated it; complained that Pearl was uptight and annoying, that she was boring and needed to stop all _this_.

But _this_ was good. This new shift, where Garnet gave instruction and Pearl followed, and enjoyed it, was a step up from her mourning. There were days where she was almost her old self again—confident, if a bit bossy, and sure of her voice when she spoke—and then, sometimes, days where she clung to Garnet's arm as if the ground wanted to give out from under her.

The clinging was new. Garnet wondered how much was habit and how much was ingrained—but Garnet didn't dislike it. It was comforting, having someone there physically.

Garnet was very much a mountain, a pillar of strength that her fellow Gems looked to, especially now. She was the most equipped to be alone, because with Ruby and Sapphire's support, she could never truly _be_ alone. Rose Quartz had been her friend, and a great leader; losing her had been a blow that the Fusion didn't think she would ever fully recover from. But Rose wasn't her _raison d'être,_ and neither was she the first friend she had ever made. She was many other things: the first Gem to wholeheartedly accept her existence, the first to encourage that she stay Garnet for long periods, an inspiration with impossible footsteps to fill—but Rose's passing hadn't broken something inside her the way it had Pearl and Amethyst.

Still, she grieved in her own way, and the addition of Pearl at her elbow helped—somehow, against all odds. Garnet had never been very physically affectionate, and Pearl had long been occupied with carrying Amethyst as they all trailed after Rose. Pearl's presence was sweet and comforting, a balm on her soul, and Garnet found more and more often that she would stand with a hand on her hip, ready for Pearl to take her place.

And she did, almost without fail. Garnet wondered how she had gone so many years without something as profoundly basic as this—contact between them was often brief, but always welcome.

Sometimes, early on, Garnet would take her aside with questions that Pearl didn't always have the answers to. How did Pearl sense where her doubts were coming from? How did she know when Ruby worried, or when Sapphire was overwhelmed by visions? Pearl always knew which arm to take without needing instruction, always found her way to Garnet's chambers at the right time.

"I just… guess," Pearl admitted one night, tracing the edge of Garnet's right hand with her index and middle fingers. They had found a quiet part of the Temple that seemed both safe and peaceful—a rarity, given the things that still lurked inside—and Garnet had removed her visor completely. The day hadn't gone well, but Amethyst was who-knew-where for the night, and winding down in the lava pit was lonely. This was just as good, and even better; Pearl had been the one to suggest it.

"Is it part of… that?" Garnet asked, all three eyes closed while she enjoyed her companion's touch. They didn't talk about it often, but the nature of their relationship still nagged at Garnet's mind sometimes.

Pearl shook her head. "I don't think so. I couldn't with Rose," she admitted, and it was nice to hear Pearl mention their leader without her voice completely knotting around the pain of loss. Garnet made an affirmative sound that turned into a contented sigh as Pearl's attention moved to the base of her hand and wrist.

"That feels nice," Garnet murmured, cracking an eye partially open to look down at Pearl, who insisted on sitting one tier lower than her on the crystal outcropping. Garnet had long given up protesting that tendency. "Do you want me to…?"

"Wha—Oh!" Pearl's cheeks flushed, and she ducked her head. "Only if you want to! I don't mind. Your hands need it after fighting with your gauntlets all day, after all."

"Pearl…"

"I barely did anything; it's the least I could do…"

"Pearl," Garnet said more firmly, and wide eyes turned upward to meet her gaze. The hands massaging hers stilled, and Garnet leaned in close. "You fight with a spear and yesterday you took apart a television. You use your hands just as much as me. Do you want a massage too?"

Cheeks blazing, Pearl nodded mutely, and Garnet took her hand inexpertly, turning the palm upward. Here, Garnet paused, briefly uncertain, before she pressed her thumb along the crease of Pearl's palm, eliciting a startled gasp. "Sorry," Garnet's voice was sincere, and Pearl nodded again, biting her lip. "I didn't realize… the center's so soft." Pearl said nothing as she let Garnet explore the contours of her palm. Long fingers mapped over Pearl's hand, prodding at tension and sometimes causing her digits to curl inward when she pushed just so.

"Ahh…" Pearl sighed, and Garnet looked up from her task, surprised to see that her companion was flushed a brilliant blue, up to the roots of her hair. Their eyes met, and Pearl's blush somehow darkened as she ducked her face, trying to hide her embarrassment. "S-sorry," she stammered breathily, "It just… It felt so good, and—I'll be quiet! Just… please, keep going… if you don't mind."

Color similarly flooded Garnet's cheeks, and it was all she could do to resist the urge to put her visor back in place to hide her embarrassment. She coughed, gripping Pearl's hand a little more tightly. "I don't mind," Garnet said finally, fighting to keep her voice steady. She rubbed circles against the back of her companion's hand, suddenly acutely aware of the way Pearl's breathing hitched.

"Is this part of it?" Garnet asked at length, taking the knight's opposite hand to start working at the tension there.

"I… I don't think so," Pearl murmured, "This is… this is new."

"Hm."

For long moments, Garnet said nothing, while Pearl fought to stay quiet herself. The Fusion continued her task, massaging Pearl's hands until the tension had all but completely melted out of both. Then, abruptly, Garnet tugged her close, wrapping her arms around Pearl's small shoulders. "I think I like it," she said, quick to add; "But only if you're okay with it."

"O-of course," Pearl stammered quickly, eyes wide as saucers. Her hands faltered between them before she raised her arms just slightly, slipping them around Garnet's narrow waist. "Only if you are."

They stayed that way for a long while before Garnet nodded slowly. She had weighed her options, good and bad, and while there was still a long way for both of them to go before something like this worked… there was no sense putting off starting that journey.

"I am."

It was another change, this time a welcome one.


	4. Weave

Years pass. Some things change; some things stay the same.

* * *

If Amethyst thought anything of it, she mostly kept it to herself. What Garnet and Pearl did together was their business. She wasn't surprised to be left out, not when Rose had understood her better than the others anyway.

They didn't explicitly announce anything, but Pearl was easy to read, and Garnet showing her affection was impossible to interpret any other way. Amethyst seemed to recognize that the two were an item, but only so far as that their unity against her in arguments was concrete now—and it happened often enough.

Amethyst didn't hate whatever Pearl and Garnet had now, but neither was she happy about it. She accepted it without protest, made very occasional jabs at Pearl's expense, and spent more and more time away from the house they were supposed to be building.

The house was completed without incident; Amethyst poofed once in the course of the six years between start and completion, and that had been on a mission. By the time Steven moved in, bright-eyed and ready to become a Crystal Gem despite having shown no real sign of his powers yet, they had settled into something that seemed to work for the three of them.

More or less.

* * *

Garnet's orders kept Pearl's Gem from burning even when they were spoken in frustration or anger. Something about instruction—from Garnet, and _only_ Garnet, Pearl found—made the world simply shine. It was in the little things; being told the laundry was done, with the unspoken instruction to go retrieve it, or Garnet alerting her to what time Steven would want lunch so she could get started making something for him to eat. Small nudges in the right direction to supplement more explicit, direct orders in battle. These kept her sane on this crazy blue planet. Pearl sometimes caught herself singing while she worked or trained, and realized that came from the same joy that she derived from the romantic relationship she and Garnet shared.

It was strange to differentiate the two, but Garnet had been very firm in her insistence that instruction and ownership was different from courting. Rose hadn't been that way. Everything had been jumbled together, lines blurred, where orders bled into kisses and rules changed with the seasons—Rose had been incredibly inconsistent, if adoring in her own way. But she was chaotic, and her adoration for humans had worn at Pearl's understanding of where crucial lines were drawn, and when.

Garnet wasn't like that at all, and Pearl could have cried for joy. Garnet's stability was the only thing that kept her upright some days, even before things had progressed between them.

That progress was slow, but there was no goal in mind. The first time they kissed on the mouth, Pearl had been certain it was a fluke—she'd gone in for Garnet's cheek on a whim, and Garnet's lips had met hers instead. Pearl had been a few steps higher than her partner, on the stairs in Steven's room; the boy had been asleep for hours, and the Fusion had come out to check on things, despite the fact that she knew Pearl would be watching their charge. Looking back, Pearl suspected that the _real_ reason she had come out of the Temple was to sneak that kiss, safe in the dark with only the moon awake to see them. She couldn't find it in her heart to mind, though. It was the first of many.

They were chaste, for the most part. Pearl reasoned that they had to be; Garnet had never initiated anything past kissing, and she couldn't bring herself to take the lead, even with implicit permission. Garnet had never rejected her advances, even encouraged them, but for all her fierceness in battle, Pearl much preferred following over leading.

Most important was Steven's comfort level. Neither Garnet nor Pearl could be sure if he had any of his mother's memories—there were days when the little boy seemed so much like Rose Quartz that they both felt her presence wash over them, like a sunbeam after a long, dark winter, and other days where Steven burned so brightly on his own that there was no doubting that he was someone entirely new. Steven was a Fusion in his own right, of Greg and Rose's love for one another, but still, they tried to keep their relationship hidden. It just seemed better that way.

Steven never questioned Pearl's hand in the crook of Garnet's arm, or the way the two stood close on the warp pad, or the way Pearl would immediately back out of an argument with Amethyst on Garnet's order. It made sense to him; Garnet was the boss, as Amethyst said, and Pearl loved rules.

He didn't need to know more than that.

* * *

Peridot's Robonoids heralded the end of order on Earth.

They were easily dealt with. The Crystal Gems, and Steven, could fight them for days at a time—and sometimes did. But the little marble robots were the first blow of many to Pearl's carefully pieced together world. Her life with Garnet wasn't chaotic, and fighting corrupted Gems was something they could do together. Training Steven folded easily into their routine. Amethyst grew more serious, less rebellious after their encounter at the Kindergarten. Things had finally started piecing together, falling neatly into something sustainable—until Peridot. The Homeworld Gem on her own would have been easy pickings; a technician, even with augmented abilities, was only a technician. Peridots were nothing compared to the monsters they fought, the corrupted Quartz beasts that Steven didn't need to know could crush his surrogate parents into dust. These, like the Robonoids, even the oversized ones, were easy enough to tag team. They could fight them until the end of time, one by one.

Fighting off Homeworld's army was something else.

Lapis Lazuli had warned them, after returning to Homeworld and no doubt alerting the Diamond Authority of their existence, that Peridot was coming. That she was bringing reinforcements. But she hadn't said _when_ , and that variable was more crucial than anything.

Pearl began to fray, even with orders to keep her busy. She was uncertain, clung more to Garnet's arm, and sometimes cried in her chambers alone. Sometimes Amethyst caught her falling apart in the boiler room while Garnet held her, and the smaller Gem simply let them be.

"I can't do this. Not again," Pearl sobbed over and over, and Garnet insisted that she could. _They_ could, together with Amethyst. Her assurances didn't help the icy fear that built up in Pearl's Gem. If anything, they reminded Pearl of the gap in their respective strengths, of how far she had fallen in the years since Steven's birth. She was just a Pearl, playing at being a soldier. The past decade of finally getting to indulge in a domestic life had just confirmed that.

"I need you to be strong, Pearl," Garnet said firmly, and Pearl nodded miserably into her shoulder. Garnet's hands spanned Pearl's back and kept her close, and the heat from the lava pit dried her tears not long after they'd streaked down her cheeks. The Fusion rocked her partner gently, closing her eyes against the myriad of futures where their strength didn't matter in the face of superior numbers and power.

When Peridot's hand ship appeared in the sky, they sent Steven away with his father. It wasn't much of a head start, but it would ensure that whoever Peridot brought with her didn't discover the boy—didn't find out what happened to Rose Quartz.

With Greg's van vanishing around the bend, Pearl turned to press her face into Garnet's shoulder one last time, eyes wet with tears she could barely contain. Garnet's hand settled in her hair for the briefest of moments before the Fusion tipped her head back and leaned down to kiss her soundly. Pearl froze just long enough for Garnet to question her decision, and then threw her arms around Garnet's shoulders, returning the kiss with everything she had, everything she'd never been able to say aloud. It was passionate and all too brief.

"Oh, come _on_!" Amethyst groaned, "You two're really gonna do this _now_?"

She was immensely surprised when the other two scooped her up into a hug, and while she'd _known_ what was at stake, she finally _understood_ the meaning of the big green hand ship in the sky.

Dead didn't even begin to describe what was in store for them.

Amethyst made a show of protesting, but hugged her companions tightly enough to bruise, blinking away her own tears. "Okay, okay, let's do this!" she said, wiggling away and catching Pearl by the hand. "Now… might be a good time for Opal. Y'think?"

It wasn't an order, but it wasn't really a question, either. Pearl stared at Amethyst through her tears, briefly startled by the suggestion. Opal stood a much better chance than either of them individually. She looked to Garnet, who nodded in agreement.

"Alright," Pearl said softly, following Amethyst to the opposite end of the deck, away from the too often unused table and umbrella.

Garnet watched them fuse, watched the way Pearl's dance was affected by her fear of failure, and forced a smile up at the end result—at Opal's familiar face, several heads higher than her own.

"Let's do this. I've got your back."


	5. Fray

Angst ahoy!

For those not in the know I'm slowly migrating these over from Ao3.

* * *

For all their efforts, they'd been captured anyway.

Steven's return had only delayed the inevitable—and worse, had resulted in the boy's Gem being exposed, along with his capture. All in all it had been a complete disaster. Pearl and Amethyst had surrendered in exchange for a guarantee of Steven's safety only to be jailed separately while Jasper stole the boy away to some other part of the ship. And Garnet…

Pearl sobbed raggedly into her knees and couldn't find it in her heart to care that Amethyst was just a wall away, able to hear every miserable sound she made. She couldn't see her, and that had to count for something.

Garnet's Gems had been taken separately, and for all they knew, Peridot could have tossed them into the sea. More likely, one or both had been broken, shattered to ensure that Garnet never defied Homeworld's laws again.

If grief alone could break a Gem, Pearl was certain that this would have been enough to shatter her into pieces. She had lost Rose during a time of peace, and been blessed with Steven in her stead—and that had been on Rose's terms.

She couldn't outlive Garnet, too.

Pearl's sobbing was erratic and heavy. Sometimes she forgot to breathe; sometimes she simply couldn't. It was a low moan that escaped her when she did make sound, a deep-seeded wail of ultimate suffering, and she pressed her balled fists into her eyes so deeply that it hurt. Garnet couldn't be dead, but she'd _seen_ her split in half, saw the way Jasper's weapon had forced her to come apart, watched as the light that composed her body drifted away from itself as if repelled by some force. Garnet had come apart at the seams, and who was to say that she could come back from that, even if her Gems were whole and came together again? Even if Ruby and Sapphire lived to fuse, what were the odds that Garnet would be herself afterwards? There were some things that Gems couldn't come back from, after all, and it would be just like Homeworld to use something like that on their enemies.

She thought back to the final strike, over four thousand years ago, to Homeworld's mysterious geo-weapon that had wiped out the bulk of Rose's army, and she wailed into her knees. She couldn't imagine having to fight Garnet if she became corrupted.

Not that she'd get the chance; they were going to be taken to Yellow Diamond, and that was a death sentence. At best, she might have her Gem ground to dust; at worst, she would be given over as a trophy to someone else, maybe reprogrammed to behave like a proper Pearl. Maybe she wouldn't remember her comrades at all, maybe Garnet and the others would be nothing more than phantoms, shadows of a dream she never wanted to wake up from. Pearl's breathing hitched, quickening, and words tumbled from her lips unbidden, some mixture of begging and praying that jumbled together into a broken mantra interspersed with Garnet's name.

"Pearl!" Amethyst hissed, banging on the wall. "Pearl snap out of it! _Breathe_!"

Amethyst's voice sounded garbled and distant to Pearl's ears, but she obeyed—or tried to. Something about the order didn't sound right, didn't sound _real_ , coming from anyone other than Garnet. Pearl had been right, then, that Garnet was the only one whose instructions truly mattered—and knowing that now, all too late, broke her heart all over again.

Breathing felt like sucking in knives, but she did it. Her swimming vision seemed to focus better once she gulped in enough air. Distantly, she wondered if the ship's oxygen levels were healthy for Steven, but she knew she was in no position to find out.

Garnet would want her to breathe.

Slowly, with great effort, Pearl eased her way out of her panic. "Sorry," she whispered, but it wasn't quite to Amethyst, not exclusively. Pearl huffed, trying to calm down, trying to make the world stop having a fuzzy black edge to it. She reached up, scratching around her Gem anxiously. The pain helped, gave her something to focus on. She dug her nails in harder. "Sorry… Amethyst."

"You sound terrible, P," Amethyst said, voice rougher than she might have liked. The truth was, she didn't feel much better than Pearl sounded, but breaking down here would do her no good. She sank into her corner, idly glaring at the bright yellow barrier between her and freedom. "No choice ideas to get us out?"

Pearl shook her head, knowing Amethyst couldn't see her. She blinked against the feeling of tears in her eyes all over again, scrubbed her eyes, and groaned. "Amethyst, I haven't got _anything_ right now," she muttered sardonically, "My Gem's burning, we're trapped, who knows where Steven is, I don't know if there's an _Earth_ anymore… I don't know _anything,_ and..."

"…And you're worried about Garnet," Amethyst finished for her, sounding oddly somber.

"It's more complicated than you think…" Pearl mumbled, finally drawing her hand away from her Gem. She sat down squarely on both hands, palm down on the ship's floor, in an attempt to stop itching. The skin around her Gem stung, but not as badly as the stone itself burned.

"You're allowed t'be," Amethyst said, "You two're lovers, you're bound to be more worried—"

"It's not that," Pearl said hastily, shutting her eyes. "We're not… lovers."

That piqued Amethyst's interest, and the purple Gem pressed a little closer to the wall to hear Pearl's quiet voice marginally better. "You coulda fooled me," she said, "Kissing like you did at the house. You're really not lovers?"

"Not exactly," the dancer sighed drearily, "We might've been, someday, but…"

"Hey—no 'might've' business," Amethyst cut in, thunking a hand against the wall. "We'll get out of this, and it'll happen someday! I mean, if that's what you're going for. I figured you already were."

Pearl said nothing to that, fighting against the urge to cry all over again. They should have been. She wished they had. She wished she'd been less timid with Garnet, that they had spent more time together as more than comrades.

Hot tears spilled down her cheeks, and Pearl fought to keep her breathing steady. "Did you?" she asked, trying to keep her heartbreak from her voice. Amethyst obviously wanted a distraction, and she could be that.

"Since years ago, yeah," Amethyst muttered, "Isn't that why you always sided together against me?"

"That isn't—" Pearl protested automatically, then stopped, catching herself. She dried her tears with the back of her hand. "Do you really think we _always_ side against you?"

It was Amethyst's turn to be silent for a long moment. Pearl could very nearly hear the shrug in her voice when she spoke. "You always side with Garnet, so…"

"It's… supposed to be that way, Amethyst," Pearl sighed, "It's… it's complicated, and it's not your fault. I just… Garnet's judgment is better than mine… She's the boss."

"You got that line from me," Amethyst almost laughed, but there wasn't enough humor in her voice. She sighed. "So you just… decided, one day, Garnet's in charge? And then hooked up to go with it?"

"That's a very abridged version, yes," Pearl sighed. "You don't want to hear the sordid details any more than I want to share them, Amethyst. Believe me."

If Pearl didn't want to talk, Amethyst wasn't going to ask, she didn't need any more crying sounds pulling at her heartstrings, if they weren't already taut enough with worry about Steven, Garnet, Ruby and Sapphire.

"I'm sorry for blowing Opal up at the beach... It's just... I was so happy Steven came back for us... No one ever comes back for us..." Amethyst knew that their imprisonment was partially her fault. Opal could have fought Jasper from a good distance and had more than enough arms to protect Steven and Garnet's Gems. And she went and blew Opal.

The apology completely blindsided her, and Pearl was silent for a handful of seconds. She said nothing, licked her chapped lips, then sighed. "Thank you… for Fusing with me at all. It's been a long time… I miss being Opal," she murmured, scrubbing at the dampness in her eyes. "I should've been happy to see him, too. We really do need to work on synchronicity." Not that they would have the chance after this.

"I'm sorry," Pearl said at length, earning a quizzical sound from Amethyst's side of the wall. "I've been awful to you, and kept secrets, and even now I'm keeping more. I surrendered when we could've fought back, and now we're…"

" _We_ surrendered, P," Amethyst corrected her dully, "I coulda kept fighting too. But seeing what happened… What were we gonna do?" she paused, then added, "I think you made the right call."

Garnet had gone down fighting, but Pearl supposed that a _worse_ situation would have arisen if she and Amethyst had done the same. She sniffed, pushed at the tears in her eyes one last time, and tilted her head back against the wall. "Thank you, Amethyst," she said softly, "I needed that."

"Sure thing, P," Amethyst said, "And… thanks. For Fusing with me, too."


	6. Torn

With this chapter, we're caught up to Ao3, so updates may be slower!

* * *

Steven's arrival not long after shocked the both of them back into action. It was a miracle in and of itself that Pearl had calmed down only moments before, and it was natural for Amethyst to take to action. Amethyst's support helped immensely—the heart-to-heart served as a goodbye they ultimately didn't need, but that brought them closer together. Pearl promised to tell Amethyst everything someday, and the younger Gem unsurprisingly blew the offer off. Still, it wasn't something Pearl offered lightly.

The news that Garnet was alive—and fighting Jasper a second time—had Pearl torn between responsibilities; Garnet might fare better with assistance, but she couldn't bear to let Steven out her sight.

It was the boy's insistence that Garnet wanted them to find the control room that galvanized Pearl into action, and though her mind was elsewhere, she ran alongside her teammates.

Peridot was easily taken care of, and Pearl moved to take the controls, risking a glance at the screen adjacent to her left. She could see Garnet—reformed and doing well against her bigger opponent—but only had time for a brief glance before interfacing with the ship's main computer took priority.

The glance was enough, though; the burning in her Gem was replaced with such a wash of relief that she nearly cried for joy. Recalibrating the ship's trajectory proved no challenge at all, and Pearl adjusted, preparing to turn around to return to Beach City.

Steven watched Garnet's battle until she and Jasper disappeared below the ship's floor. Moments later, the entire vessel shook; Pearl was thrown from the control system by the shock, in time to see that the main engine had exploded. In the confusion, Peridot escaped; vanished through a pod none of the Crystal Gems knew how to summon for their own use. The hand ship fired her away, began to come apart as they reentered the atmosphere, and Pearl found Steven's shoulders with shaking hands.

They were going to die.

The three stood, staring numbly at the Earth below as their ship's speed mounted, pulled downward by the planet's gravity. Pearl risked a glance at the screen she had seen Garnet on moments ago, however briefly, but was rewarded with nothing but static.

None of them expected the doors to remain operational, or for Garnet to come dashing in. Pearl's heart stopped, caught in her throat at the sight of her owner and best friend.

"Garnet!"

"This ship is going down!" the Fusion hissed.

"What about Lapis?" Steven cried, eternally worried about his Beach Summer Fun Buddy despite all the trouble she had caused them so far. Amethyst stared critically at him. Pearl couldn't tear her gaze away from Garnet.

Garnet shook her head. "There's no time!"

With the Earth quickly coming up on them, and no time for plans or heroics, Pearl all but dove for Garnet, whose arms came up immediately to embrace her. The solid feeling of the Fusion's breastplate beneath her hand nearly brought Pearl to tears all over again, but she said nothing, opting instead to bury her face in Garnet's shoulder.

There wasn't time for this, but Garnet couldn't find it in her heart to begrudge Pearl. Every future she'd seen ended the same way, in green flames and an abrupt impact with the cliffs close to home.

"I'm sorry," Garnet whispered, quietly enough that only Pearl heard her, and to her surprise, Amethyst joined the embrace, face pressed into Garnet's side. Pearl tugged Steven in as well, preparing herself for the inevitable.

"Bubble!" Steven gasped, and with a flourish so reminiscent of Rose's power, the four of them were surrounded by a pink barrier. It was cramped, and Garnet curled around her team, shielding them as best she could.

Surviving the impact at all was so unlikely that she hadn't dared to consider it as a possibility.

But Steven truly produced miracles.

* * *

That Lapis and Jasper's Fusion hadn't killed them was a miracle as well. Whatever tenuous bond Steven had with the blue Gem had somehow carried over, been strong enough to thwart her Fusion. Pearl found more comfort than ever at Garnet's side, clutching her arm as the hand ship's wreckage burned merrily behind them, and the sun rose over the sea.

Amethyst ruined it, too excited to allow Pearl and Garnet the much-needed reprieve, but her celebration broke the mood. Greg arrived shortly thereafter, and it was hours before Garnet and Pearl could slip into the Temple to recover together.

Garnet expected Pearl to cry; that was normal. And truly, she didn't blame her. The soul-rending gasp her partner had let out when Jasper split her haunted her, as fresh in her mind as Steven's look of abject horror before she'd poofed.

She didn't expect Pearl to jump into her arms once the Temple door closed, or for the slighter Gem to cover her face and neck in urgent kisses, cheeks wet with tears.

"Pearl—" Garnet tried not to groan, canting her neck instinctively to grant her partner better access. Everywhere Pearl touched on her new body tingled comfortably, but now wasn't the time. " _Pearl_!"

Pearl only broke away enough to stare up at Garnet, catching her face in her hands. "You were dead," Pearl choked out, quaking where she stood _en pointe_. Garnet rubbed her back soothingly, then closed her eyes, phasing away her visor in a flurry of red and blue light. Pearl blinked up at her, briefly dazzled by the light, and then brushed shaking thumbs along her cheekbones, beneath two of her eyes. "Garnet, you were gone, I _felt_ it, I couldn't—"

"I just poofed," Garnet said soothingly, leaning in to kiss the crown of the alabaster Gem's head, just above her hairline. "She unfused me, that's all."

"You were _gone_ ," Pearl insisted, "Completely gone! I thought—I was so worried, Jasper could've shattered you, my Gem was burning and I was so scared—"

"And I'm here now," Garnet cut her off, pulling Pearl against her. She crumpled into the Fusion's embrace, dissolving quickly into relieved tears. Garnet held her close, leading her toward the edge of the main pool in Pearl's room to coax her down, taking a seat with her feet submerged in the water. Pearl joined without instruction, never breaking from her embrace, curling up close to her partner until long after she'd stopped crying.

Garnet ran her knuckles up and down Pearl's spine, and when she had finally pulled herself together enough to speak, the first thing out of her mouth was: "I'm sorry," and then, "I didn't mean to jump you," Pearl whispered sheepishly.

"I don't mind," Garnet said in kind, threading her fingers through Pearl's short hair. "You're welcome to jump me like that anytime. It wasn't unpleasant, by any means… But we can't hole up in your room yet. We've got to clean up that shipwreck and check on Steven and Amethyst."

At the moment, Pearl didn't think she could care less about obligations toward mankind's safety, or the inherent danger of a wrecked Gem ship out in the open, or almost anything other than the feeling of Garnet's arms around her. Still, Steven's safety meant more than her own wishes, and more than that, something was missing, and it burned in her Gem, just uncomfortable enough to draw her attention from the bliss that being near Garnet afforded her.

"Order me," Pearl begged, clinging just a little more tightly. She couldn't meet Garnet's eyes. "I… I know it's silly, I know you shouldn't have to, just please…"

The request startled Garnet somewhat. It wasn't often that Pearl asked for explicit orders, but she complied. "It's an order," Garnet said firmly, and she felt the shiver that ran through Pearl's thin frame, still pressed close to her. "You've got to help me clean up that ship. Non-negotiable."

And just like that, the last embers burning in her Gem quieted. With order restored, however temporarily, she could breathe again. Pearl nodded, pressing a grateful kiss to Garnet's cheek, and gathered herself up off of the floor. She wiped at the last of her tears, drew in a shaky breath, and met Garnet's gaze with a brilliant smile once the other Gem rose. "Thank you, Garnet," Pearl said, reaching for her arm instinctively. Garnet let her, pulling Pearl to her side and making her way for the door.


	7. Stitch

Sorry for the long wait between updates! I've actually been working on several other fics over on Ao3, and my life has been incredibly hectic. Hopefully a sweet chapter will make up for it!

* * *

The next few weeks weren't quite uneventful, but Pearl was thankful more than anything that, despite having to clean up the wrecked Gem craft and despite Peridot being on the loose somewhere, order was more or less restored at home. Garnet had jokingly suggested that she would end up taking over Steven's chore wheel, and sure enough, the prediction had been accurate—and even if it hadn't been an order, Pearl's Gem thrummed with energy. She did dishes, laundry, took out trash, resurfaced the counters—the latter didn't really need doing, but Garnet hadn't told her not to, and there had been no mission that day.

In point of fact, Garnet praised her work, and Pearl didn't think she could be happier. When they found Peridot's escape pod—unfortunately devoid of Peridot in it—Pearl tasked herself with discovering its secrets, and sometimes, when she didn't have other things to do, Garnet would come watch her work on it. Her compliments kept her focused, and her watchful gaze kept Pearl on her toes.

Not that she needed to be. Garnet trusted her with machinery. Garnet trusted her with a lot of things that Pearls weren't meant to touch, and that meant the world.

Sometimes it didn't stop the burning in her Gem, more frequent now than ever, but it wasn't completely unbearable. She wanted to be of use. She wanted Garnet to need something of her. Pearl wanted many things, and most of them weren't her right to ask for. Still, she was happy with things like this—with Garnet watching her as she worked, unperturbed when Pearl peeked out from underneath the dented sphere, covered in slick oil and similar fluid from the spacecraft. Garnet's smile was faint, but impossible to miss.

"Can I have the Phillips #2x6?" Pearl asked hopefully, unable to reach her toolbox.

"You'll have to describe it for me," Garnet said, reaching into the box blindly. "I have no idea what a 'Phillips #2x6' is."

Pearl flushed. It was easy to forget that Garnet, for all that she did know, wasn't as invested in these silly human tools as she was. "Ah… this one," Pearl said, projecting an image of the screwdriver from her Gem. "It has a yellow and black handle."

"Got it."

Garnet made no attempt to hide her interest as she handed the tool over, sliding long fingers along the inside of Pearl's bare wrist and eliciting a shuddering sigh from her partner. Pearl flushed, thanked her, and returned to her task, thoroughly distracted, and they both knew it. The screwdriver didn't quite work as well as a Gem-powered equivalent might have, but Pearl was able to loose the panel and access the pod's internal wiring.

"Pearl."

"Y-yes?" Pearl asked, pushing herself out from underneath the pod again, looking up at Garnet uncertainly.

"You're not planning to fly off in this thing, are you?"

The question startled her, and Pearl shook her head. "I'm not," she said quickly, adding; "I know I… almost left with Steven, with the one I built, but I definitely don't plan to go anywhere now. Not without you. I couldn't."

Garnet's relief was almost tangible on the air, and Pearl paused, getting to her feet and retrieving a towel to dry herself off with. "Did you see something?" she asked cautiously, and once she was more or less clean, she moved to Garnet's side, taking a seat on the edge of the stairs. Her balance was perfect, but the position was precarious, and Pearl settled a hand gingerly on Garnet's thigh for added support.

"No," Garnet said softly, almost guiltily. Under normal circumstances, she would have shared what little she could piece together, but…

"I just worried… I haven't seen things quite the same since I regenerated. Maybe I'm losing my touch. The future seems less certain."

Pearl stared for a long moment, unsure of how to respond. Garnet had always been excellent at predicting possible outcomes, had never lost that power before. "I… do you think it could be something Jasper did? When she…" _killed_ , "…defused you?"

"I'm not sure."

They sat in silence for several moments before Garnet sighed, pulling Pearl easily into her lap, and Pearl didn't protest, turning to hug her owner tightly in response. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, "I doubt Peridot's escape pod would have schematics on one… and I couldn't possibly build it or test it to find out. I can't. Garnet, if I lost you again, I—"

"Ssh," Garnet stopped her ramblings as they started to tumble out of control, leaning in to kiss the crown of her head. Pearl was silent immediately, though she clung a little more tightly to the Fusion. "I don't exactly want to be split up again to find out. I don't want it any more than you do."

"I want to be able to help you," Pearl said softly, taking Garnet's silence as permission to speak again, knowing that Garnet wouldn't have denied her. It was a strange thing, being able to reject her instincts where Garnet was concerned—she wasn't like Rose Quartz, and she wasn't like a _normal_ owner.

But what they had wasn't normal either. Garnet's long fingers in her hair, at the back of her neck, curled around the base of her skull, spoke of something indulgent and loving, a completely different type of relationship than her Gem ached over between instructions.

"You do help me," Garnet said in kind, pressing a soft kiss to the edge of Pearl's Gem. Her partner giggled despite the gloom creeping in on her, and Garnet smiled a little. "I love you."

Pearl froze, drawing back just enough to stare up at Garnet's guarded face, blue eyes almost painfully round. "Garnet…?" her voice was scarcely a whisper, "Did you just…?"

"I did," Garnet assured her, withdrawing a hand to remove her visor. Their eyes met, and Pearl was certain that her heart would burst. The Fusion leaned in, brushing her lips over Pearl's in the barest of whispers. "And I mean it."

When Garnet kissed her, Pearl felt as if she might drown from the volume of emotions crashing in on her. She returned the kiss eagerly, kissing Garnet until neither of them could breathe, until dragonflies fluttered between them and light danced behind her eyelids.

Pearl whimpered into the kiss as it steadily grew heated, but it wasn't for want of enjoyment. She wanted more, so much more than just kisses, but she couldn't believe, could scarcely process—

Garnet had said she loved her.

There was nothing ambiguous about that.

Pearl drew back with a gasp, cheeks blazing, lips bruised from the passionate exchange. Garnet opened her eyes lazily, and Pearl thought that she would die from the way her heart pounded quadruple time when the bigger Gem licked her lips.

"You don't have to answer," Garnet said quietly, cupping Pearl's cheek. "And you don't have to say anything if you aren't sure yet. But I wanted you to know."

"But I'm a Pearl," the alabaster Gem protested weakly, "I'm not— We can't—"

"Pearl," Garnet cut in, "This isn't Homeworld. This is Earth. I don't care what the rules were there. I love you, whether you're mine or not, and I want you to know it. I don't know how to show you." Garnet's cheeks were flushed, though faintly, and Pearl could see some measure of uncertainty there, despite the firmness in her hands and voice. "So I'm telling you. So there's no room for doubt or misunderstandings."

Slack-jawed, Pearl stared up at her partner for several long moments before she managed a faint nod. Shaking hands reached for Garnet's face, and Pearl drew her closer. "You're certain?" she whispered, earning a minute nod. The pale Gem blinked rapidly against the beginnings of tears. "I—"

"Only if you're sure," Garnet said softly, "You don't have to, just because I said it."

"But I do," Pearl's voice was stronger now, but barely, and she laughed, meeting Garnet's lips eagerly. "I love you, Garnet. More than I could possibly say."

Garnet's smile could have parted the clouds on a rainy day, and she pressed another kiss to Pearl's waiting lips. "Crisis averted, then," she murmured, glad to see one of several potential futures drift by without coming to pass.

"Huh?" Pearl asked, surprised, and Garnet shook her head.

"It's nothing we'll have to face, now," Garnet assured her, and Pearl smiled up at her so sweetly that she had to kiss her again and again. Between giggles and kisses, 'I love yous' were exchanged, and it was entirely luck that they weren't caught making out on the staircase to Steven's bedroom.


End file.
